Ockwells Park - Lillibrooke Manor - Paley Street - Touchen End - Stud Green

29 Oct 2006

• Total distance: seven miles
• Start point: Ockwells park SU 878790
• Weather: Still, with bright low sun.
• Temperature at start: 12C.
• Muddiness rating: *** (*=dry, *****=awful) Big puddles and several tacky stretches but there were easy detours.
• People passed: Hardly anyone apart from a few dog walkers near the car park.
• Step counter: 14745
• Camera: Olympus C-5060W. Images taken before deletions = 100.

A long lunch and an unfamiliar absence of guilt (the result of having stretched my legs the previous day on a camera club walk) meant I was mentally psyched up to spend the afternoon snoozing in front of the football. Then I remembered my ambition of adding a walk a month to this website throughout the year, followed quickly by a realisation that the clocks had gone back. If I was to deliver on my promise, I had just two and a half hours to do so….

Travelling any distance was out of the question, so I scanned the relevant OS Explorer map and threw together a meandering conflation of footpaths and byways which served no other purpose than to take me somewhere peaceful and to get me back before dark

It failed on both counts. My route rarely ventured more than a mile from the M4, and I arrived back at the car feeling my way in complete darkness, an experience I’m all too familiar with in the winter. One day, at the dark end of one of my walks, I’ll meet my alter ego coming the other way through the gloom and we’ll scare the living daylights out of each other.

But the day, or what was left of it as I set out from Ockwells Park, was pristine and the walk was exhilarating as a result. The sun was low but bright, and the young shoots of what might have been winter wheat or barley made vivid green lines and arcs across the fields.

According to the admirable David Nash Ford’s website, Ockwells Manor is the most magnificent medieval secular building in the county. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see much of it from the road.

I had a little more luck a quarter of a mile further on with Lillibrooke Manor, which was constructed in 1490 and still looks like in good lick. Built by the Martyn family of Adelhampton House in Dorset, the house has been through the usual series of sales, inheritances and confiscations through which the landed classes shuffle country seats amongst themselves, until today when its principle purpose appears to be being somewhere nice and expensive to get married. Perhaps as a consequence the owners seem less than welcoming to walkers, forcing me to scale a barbed-wire-topped fence to gain access to the public footpath.

The path took me round the north side of Shrubbery Copse, where I was attacked by a squirrel many years ago. On that occasion I ran away in a less than heroic fashion. Today though I was intent on revenge and fully prepared to club the little bastard with my Olympus if he showed up, but he sensibly stayed well out of my way.

Above the M4 I thought I’d try to get a photo that encapsulated the relentless stream of busy traffic heading towards London at the end of half-term week. I was able to hold the camera absolutely still on the concrete parapet and that freed me to use a slow shutter speed, and thus blur the cars. The photo shown was on 1/15 second, which seemed about the best compromise. I was amazed to see later that despite the heavy traffic, of the thirty one shots I’d taken of a stretch of motorway three lines wide and about thirty five meters long, only two captured a complete vehicle. Maybe it had something to do with the delay before the camera fired, or maybe it was my reaction time, or perhaps a busy motorway is really just a lot of empty space with the odd car whizzing through and it just looks congested.

Paley Street was quiet, the only noises the odd horse clip-clopping along the road and an occasional distant lawnmower, trimming grass reinvigorated by the warm October. Everywhere I looked, apple and pear trees were laden with fruit, almost certainly to be left unpicked, destined to drop uneaten. I can’t figure this out. Perhaps these days people are suspicious of an apple if it doesn’t have a tiny label on it. When did apples start having serial numbers anyway? I’m a liberal sort, but not picking your apples is almost as heinous as contravening the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006 in my view.

By the time I got to Stud Green the sun had almost gone and the temperature was plummeting. Overhead, flocks of birds danced intricate jinking rituals in preparation for their long flight south. Airliners heading into Heathrow were sinking gently though the still air, while others higher up drew salmon pink lines across the deep blue sky. A fluffy, gibbous moon watched it all. A few stars began to appear, their cold twinkling light a reminder of icy nights to come.

David Nash Ford’s web pages > Ockwells Manor Lillibrooke Manor

Click here for map > OckwellsMap

Choose another walk > TheWalks

-- RodBird - 05 Nov 2006